ll, for
there were no other graves to be seen within the fort.

Chapter 13

Those Yellow Pine Boxes

It was late in the short afternoon, and getting close on to twilight,
when we got back into the town. Except for the soldiers there was
little life stirring in the twisting streets. There was a funeral or so
in progress. It seemed to us that always, no matter where we stopped,
in whatsoever town or at whatsoever hour, some dead soldier was being
put away. Still, I suppose we shouldn't have felt any surprise at that.
By now half of Europe was one great funeral. Part of it was on crutches
and part of it was in the graveyard and the rest of it was in the field.

Daily in these towns back behind the firing lines a certain percentage
of the invalided and the injured, who had been brought thus far before
their condition became actually serious, would die; and twice daily, or
oftener, the dead would be buried with military honors.

So naturally we were eyewitnesses to a great many of these funerals.
Somehow they impressed me more than the sight of dead men being
hurriedly shoveled under ground on the battle front where they had
fallen. Perhaps it was the consciousness that those who had these
formal, separate burials were men who came alive out of the fighting,
and who, even after being stricken, had a chance for life and then lost
it. Perhaps it was the small show of ceremony and ritual which marked
each one--the firing squad, the clergyman in his robes, the tramping
escort--that left so enduring an impress upon my mind. I did not try to
analyze the reasons; but I know my companions felt as I did.

I remember quite distinctly the very first of these funerals that I
witnessed. Possibly I remember it with such distinctness because it was
the firSt. On our way to the advance positions of the Germans we had
come as far as Chimay, which is an old Belgian town just over the
frontier from France. I was sitting on a bench just outside the doorway
of a parochial school conducted by nuns, which had been taken over by
the conquerors and converted into a temporary receiving hospital for men
who were too seriously wounded to stand the journey up into Germany.
All the surgeons on duty here were Germans, but the nursing force was
about equally divided between nuns and Lutheran deaconesses who had been
brought overland for this duty. Also there were several volunteer
nurses--the wife of an officer, a wealthy widow fro